Guest Post and Giveaway: The Subs Club by J.A. Rock

Today I am so pleased to welcome J.A. Rock to Joyfully Jay. J.A. k has come to talk to us about her latest release, The Subs Club. She has also brought along a great giveaway. Please join me in giving J.A. a big welcome!

Hi! I’m J.A. Rock, and right now I’m touring the internet talking about my latest release The Subs Club—Book 1 in The Subs Club series. Thanks so much to the blogs that are hosting me on this tour, and be sure to leave comments on the tour posts for a chance to win your choice of two backlist ebooks and a $10 Amazon gift card!

Writing “Authentic” Kink

I have kind of a problem with the word “authentic.” Not a huge problem—it’s just not one of my favorite words. It gets thrown around a lot. An “authentic” portrayal of gay men, or an “authentic” portrayal of kinksters, or Hispanic-Americans or women or teenagers or whatever. As though people can be separated into homogenous groups based on gender, age, orientation, race, etc., and those group members share some kind of secret experience no one else could possibly understand.

To an extent, there are binding experiences within groups. Maybe not every queer person has experienced overt bullying, but we’ve all been subjected to our culture—and government’s—second-class citizenizing. People who are active in the kink scene have likely noticed the sometimes subtle, sometimes not-so-much messages that mainstream media sends about kink: that it’s either rooted in psychological illness, or it’s a punchline.

I’ve said before that authentic kink was one of my goals with the Subs Club, and that’s me being bad and using a word that isn’t particularly useful. So here’s what I mean by authentic: I wanted to capture experiences that I have in common with many kinky people I know. Not every kinkster has had these experiences. But a lot of us have.

That means acknowledging that going to a BDSM club often involves signing waivers and having to go over lots of rules and learning where the disinfectant is so you can wipe down the furniture when you’re done getting bodily fluids all over it. It means that not everyone is fit and sexy and can afford expensive equipment and gear. It means acknowledging that BDSM often results, not in endless orgasms, but in feelings of confusion and frustration. That lots of kinksters don’t have straightforward roles or desires, but rather, experiment with different types of play, and that kink is something you fit into the rest of your life, not something that defines it.

And perhaps most importantly, that kink often isn’t “sexy,” in the traditional sense. Or rather, certain kinks are often not sexy to the people who don’t practice them. This is a dichotomy that exists in romance in general—we have fantasy-based romance, full of gorgeous people and adventurous, orgasm-riddled sex, and we also have romance that’s probably a little closer to our real life experiences—flawed, ordinary people having messy, awkward sex. BDSM is the same way. There’s this sort of agreed-upon formula for “hot” BDSM. Where nothing gets too messy or painful or scary, and the tropes are familiar: the kneeling and the honorifics and the delicious merging of pain and pleasure.

The Subs Club is not about “hot” BDSM. These characters do the kind of kink where you expel enemas in a bucket, where you dress up like a pony and drool like a motherfucker because there’s a bit in your mouth. Where you have to douche before anal play because butts contain poop. Where you try a thing that you thought you might enjoy but instead of having an orgasm you were like “Ew, gross, this is the worst thing ever and I never want to do it again.” Signals get crossed, characters struggle with the psychological consequences of their kinks, and sometimes the dungeon furniture has a weird sticky film on it because someone didn’t wipe it down.

Whether the Subs Club kink is “authentic” probably depends on who’s reading. But it’s true to my experience, which involves messes, falling over, and equipment fails. Because the thing is, my very flawed, very awkward kink experiences are hot to me. It’s like how I think Kate Winslet is the most gorgeous person in the known world, yet at the end of the day I’d rather have sex with my partner. Yes, maybe it would be cool to do a dark, seductive, elegant flogging scene where the dialogue was perfect and the orgasms were plentiful and I looked like a graceful, kinky swan and my partner looked like…Kate Winslet. But I’m perfectly happy with my scenes where we look like ourselves and I trip over the spanking bench or accidentally stab myself with the spike on my wrist cuff or have to stop the scene to say “You can’t put that in there right now or bad things are gonna happen.” The kink in the Subs Club isn’t pretty and isn’t meant to be—but I hope it’s a good time.

You have been warned. 🙂

Blurb

About The Subs Club (The Subs Club #1)

A year ago, my best friend Hal died at the hands of an incompetent “dom.” So I started the Subs Club, a private blog where submissives can review doms and call out the douche bags.

A perfect example of the kind of arrogant asshole I mean? The Disciplinarian. He has a pornstache. He loves meat, stoicism, America, and real discipline. And he thinks subs exist to serve him.

But . . . not everything about him is awful. His Davy Crockett act just seems like a cover for his fear of intimacy, and part of me wants to show him it’s okay to get close to people. And, I mean, sue me, but I have fantasized about real discipline. Not role-play, but like, Dave, you’re gonna be thirty in four years and you still work in a mall; get your ass in gear or I’ll spank it.

After the death of their friend Hal at the hands of an irresponsible dom, submissive friends Dave, Kamen, Miles, and Gould band together to form the Subs Club—an organization seeking to expose dangerous local doms. The club slowly evolves as romances blossom, loyalties are tested, and tensions mount in a community already struggling for unity in the wake of Hal’s death.

From domestic discipline to knife play to fashion paraphilia, and from family drama to new jobs to first loves, the members of the Subs Club explore life’s kinks inside and outside of the bedroom as they attempt to let go of the past and move forward.

Bio

J.A. Rock is the author of queer romance and suspense novels, including BY HIS RULES, TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME, and, with Lisa Henry, THE GOOD BOY and WHEN ALL THE WORLD SLEEPS. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama and a BA in theater from Case Western Reserve University. J.A. also writes queer fiction and essays under the name Jill Smith. Raised in Ohio and West Virginia, she now lives in Chicago with her dog, Professor Anne Studebaker.

Giveaway

To celebrate the release of The Subs Club, J.A. Rock is giving away two titles from her backlist and a $10 Amazon gift card! Your first comment at each stop on this tour enters you in the drawing. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on December 12, 2015. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. Entries. Follow the tour for more opportunities to enter the giveaway! Don’t forget to leave your email or method of contact so Riptide can reach you if you win!

By entering the giveaway, you’re confirming that you are at least 18 years old.

Winners will be selected by random number. No purchase necessary to win. The number of eligible entries received determines the odds of winning.

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Winners may be announced on the blog following the contest. By entering the contest you are agreeing to allow your name to be posted and promoted as the contest winner by Joyfully Jay.

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By entering you are agreeing to hold Joyfully Jay harmless if the prize or giveaway in some way negatively impacts the winner.

Readers may only enter once for each contest. Duplicate entries for the same giveaway will be ignored. In the event of technical problems with the blog during the contest, every effort will be made to extend the contest deadline to allow for additional entries.

Congratulations on the release. I was already interested in this book but this post has make me want to start it right now. I love stories where not everyone or everything is perfect and the concept you talked about “authenthic” is so rarely seen that is very intriguing to me.

To me, the cool part about kink/BDSM is what it reveals about characters and the dynamics between them. So, even if it isn’t sexy (though JA has had some really sexy scenes to read in many books!), my interest is piqued!

Congratulations on this new book! I love the premise! I mean there are sites for college students to rate their professors why not one for Subs rating Doms after all the Subs have a lot more to lose than a bad grade.

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Welcome to Joyfully Jay! My name is Jay and I started this blog because I love to read and wanted a place to share my thoughts with other readers and lovers of romance. Joyfully Jay kicked off back in September 2011 and we are growing bigger every day! We review primarily romance featuring men, but we also review all kinds of LGBTQ romance here, as well as literary fiction and non-fiction. In addition to book reviews, we host daily author guest posts and regular giveaways. So lots of fun stuff and we keep quite busy here! …read more